Likening companies to animals is not uncommon. Big businesses, like Wal-Mart, are often referred to as “elephants,” whereas small businesses or mom-and-pop shops are called “mice.” However, the term “gazelle company” is less associated with a company’s physical size, but rather its capacity for rapid growth.
Author David Birch first coined the term in his 1987 book: Job Creation in America: How Our Smallest Companies Put the Most People to Work. He defined a gazelle company as one that doubles its sales every four years. This growth rate is immense, but it is not limited to companies that are sizable themselves. Anyone can earn the title of a gazelle company.
When the term was originally coined, a large percentage of companies that gained the gazelle title were in retail sales. But lately, tech-focused and software companies have been experiencing the most year-over-year growth. For example, more than half of the top ten fastest growing companies in 2020 were all tech-based. AppFolio, Netflix, Amazon, and Etsy were among the list.
Gazelle companies are also known for their ability to generate new job opportunities. David Birch was able to prove that gazelle companies actually outpace both Fortune 500 companies and small business when it comes to the creation of new jobs. However, these jobs don’t always last as long. Eventually, it proves very difficult for most companies to sustain that kind of growth for more than 5 years.
gazelle companies are a catalyst of job creation
At number8, we work to adopt the mindset of these fast-growing entrepreneurial businesses known as “gazelles.” . Our consultants are the at the very top of the talent pool, meaning we only recruit the best developers and IT professionals in Latin America. We’re not in the business of training junior level developers and passing them off to our clients as senior level talent, like much of our competition.
We believe that in order to stay competitive, decision makers at computer software companies should be looking globally for highly-skilled remote talent. We put that very belief to work in our offices by leveraging the business knowledge and technology talent of our employees located not only in the United States, but across 13 Latin American countries.
For many years, number8 ranked as one of the fastest growing companies by Greater Louisville Inc. We have also ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies in the U.S. We are recognized as a leader in IT consulting, technical staffing solutions, and agile software development outsourcing.
One of the greatest values we bring to our customers is that our nearshore location enables us to augment development teams without the added burden of increased specifications, communication difficulties, and rework. Our most successful clients integrate our agile software developers into their onsite teams. This helps to better leverage their subject experts and increase team velocity.
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